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I reboot and start the OS install, all appears to be ok, windows setup,
f6 load device drivers, load driver as requested, cooks on a little
more, finally windows screen, install, repair, exit? I go for the new install
and hit enter, next screen I see tells me it cannot locate the drives?
What am I missing here?

I assume he's using AHCI, in which case he needs a driver for that too.

Make sure you have the correct driver. It should come as part of a zip file with a utility for creating a driver floppy disk. There are two versions, one is 32bit and the other 64bit. There is also an entirely different RAID driver if your motherboard has purple JMicron SATA ports in edition to the Intel ICH. If you're trying to use those then that would be a problem too. Definitely use the Intel ports if you aren't already.

If you can't get it working then you can slipstream the driver into your install disc. You have already slipstreamed SP3, so inserting a RAID driver should be no problem.

Chike's solution is perfectly valid and is a legitimate way to switch from IDE to AHCI. I have done it on my Windows XP image. It works just as well as having the drivers installed at install time. There's no benefit or essentialness to having AHCI mode working at install time compared to activating it later. This method sounds like a hack, but it's covered on the Microsoft Knowledge base and is ratified by MS.

Re: initial setup EP45-UD3L

I was able to get everything set up in IDE mode and have installed the
OS. I may look at switching to the raid config as mentioned above when
I get everything updated. If I set up the IHCA raid do the partions have
to be equal or just should the drives be the same?